December 2009
73 posts
Night
“I suffer from a motor neuron disorder, in my case a variant of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS): Lou Gehrig’s disease. […] What is distinctive about ALS […] is firstly that there is no loss of sensation (a mixed blessing) and secondly that there is no pain. In contrast to almost every other serious or deadly disease, one is thus left free to contemplate at leisure and...
11 fires - 275 news articles and counting
My charming and somewhat sleepy little home town usually doesn’t make it into the news, but when you start typing “No” into the Google News search window, “Northampton fires” pops up right behind “Northwest Airlines”. And at the time of this writing, there are 275 news articles about a series of fires here last night (it says 275 on the main page, but when...
More on tapes
I went to an indoor flea market today, and I came across a pile of audio tapes, the likes of which I hadn’t seen before. The boxes they came in were rather large, and they looked like reel-to-reel spool containers, but the tapes were actually contained in a rather large plastic cassette. Out of curiosity, I bought one ($1, the handwriting on the cassette says “The First Man To Land On...
Demi Moore’s Lawyer Demands Apology for Clumsy...
Really. Can we all get an apology from all the people involved that we are subjected to this nonsense?
The best Gizmo 2009
Hands down, apart from the Canon G10, the best gizmo I bought this year was an ASUS Eee PC. I bought mine nine months ago, so the battery in mine will “only” last 6 hours - the new ones apparently last for over 10. I opted for the memory-only version, which doesn’t have a hard drive (one less component that can break).
I’m usually not too excited about gizmos but the...
"the Senate [...] has become ominously...
“the Senate — and, therefore, the U.S. government as a whole — has become ominously dysfunctional. After all, Democrats won big last year, running on a platform that put health reform front and center. In any other advanced democracy this would have given them the mandate and the ability to make major changes. But the need for 60 votes to cut off Senate debate and end a filibuster — a...
Lesley Martin on why photo-book publishing for the...
“What I have encountered when proposing something outside of the norm, however, is that there are commonly three points of resistance: 1. Sales and marketing concerns, which maintain that a book comes in the guise of a box of cards; or of a 19-foot accordian-fold; or that is enormous beyond all bounds of the traditional bookshelf will not be viable or attractive to the average bookbuyer; 2. ...
Gunning Full Throttle into the Greenhouse
“What a disaster. The climate summit in Copenhagen has failed because of the hardball politicking of the United States, China and several other countries — and because people just can’t seem to fathom how catastrophic climate change will be. They probably won’t have long to wait before things become a bit clearer.” - Der Spiegel
“Like businessmen who insist a...
Is posting about whether smashing a gallery window...
It might just be, just as probably linking to it is: Clancco.
PS: “Reblogging” this might just take it to a new level. And then I will delete this post, to create the ultimate act of art, the deletion of a post that is linking to a post about whether or not the smashing of a gallery window is art.
PPS: I just realized that the ultimate act of art would be the physical destruction of...
A good analysis
Standard analysis has it that in the US it’s conservatives versus progressives. Not so, argues Glenn Greenwald: “The health care bill is one of the most flagrant advancements of this corporatism yet, as it bizarrely forces millions of people to buy extremely inadequate products from the private health insurance industry — regardless of whether they want it or, worse, whether they...
Tea
I suppose if I had to think of the biggest non-photo discovery this year it would be tea (yes, tea), and it would be a re-discovery. I grew up in the northern part of Germany, where people predominantly drink tea, and I started drinking coffee pretty late. After I moved away from home, my tea consumption dropped quite a bit, since the different water made producing a nice tea pretty difficult (I...
Crazy of the Year
Looks like Salon.com was a bit premature with their choice of Crazy of the Year: “The BBC today asked users of its news website ‘Should homosexuals face execution?’ on a talkboard discussion for a World Service programme for African listeners.” (story)
$57,077.60
Apparently, the US is spending $57,077.60 per minute on the surge used for the war in Afghanistan. $57,077.60 would make a pretty decent salary (unless you live in a place like New York City). There are 525,600 minutes in a year. So there are 525,600 jobs the government could be spending the money on.
Someone else did the numbers: “we could have dedicated that $30 billion [which the...
Enough of the typologies already!
Seriously, this is too much. Do we really have to see typologies of nurses’ shoes? I don’t think so.
Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones
This is not a joke, but it certainly sounds like one: “Militants in Iraq have used $26 off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need to evade or monitor U.S. military operations.” - story
Oops
The modem at home crapped out. That’ll be fun trying to get Comcast to fix things…
When Costco ran out of tomatoes
Priceless: Yes, We Have No Tomatoes: Costco’s missile defense shield for Palin
'This Blog is Not a Blog'
“This Blog is Not a Blog,” writes Pete, and to a certain extent I can understand the sentiment. I’ve long struggled with how to describe what I “do” (as in “So what do you do?” - which seems to be some sort of standard greeting at certain parties, where you don’t want to waste much time making small-talk, when, in fact, you can talk right about...
Octopus of the Day
The best thing about this little movie is how casually the octopus is walking by right at the beginning. He’s probably whistling some show tune, which - alas! - they didn’t capture on video. And he clearly knows that nobody looks tremendously good lugging around a coconut shell. If anything, that kind of cool and self-awareness is rarely seen in invertebrates…
'Downright sexy: The contrasting effect of...
“A study that’s in press at Social Cognition has shown that women rate men’s photos as more attractive when they’re placed near the top of the screen. By contrast, men rate women’s photos as more attractive when they’re located near the bottom of the screen.” - story
How Much is Facebook Privacy Worth?
I had to read this post twice, because at first I thought it was a joke. So privacy is now a privilege because, after all, companies have to make money (from exploiting people’s lack of privacy)? Excuse me? Internet privacy is like a private phone number?
Where to begin, where to begin?
It’s like taking pictures of someone whose shades aren’t drawn and then, when that person is...
Just a random thought
It might be “offensive” to the particular Senator, but if a old white man with no principles and a wife who works for the very companies his former party’s supposed reforms are trying to fix just a little bit can dictate the conditions of said reforms then that’s not a democracy, that’s an utter travesty. And if the White House, occupied by a man who ran under the...
On the Couch with Philip Roth
Beautiful: “As a rule, I read and write poetry in bed; philosophy and serious essays sitting down at my desk; newspapers and magazines while I eat breakfast or lunch, and novels while lying on the couch. It’s toughest to find a good place to read history, since what one is reading usually is a story of injustices and atrocities and wherever one does that, be it in the garden on a fine summer...
A Bit Rich
“People who earn more don’t necessarily work harder than those who earn less. The private sector is not necessarily more efficient than the public sector. And high salaries don’t necessarily reflect talent. The report offers a series of policy recommendations that would reduce the inequality between different incomes and reconnect salaries with the value of work.” - source
almost...
I almost sat down to write some sort of general post, relating the different voyeuristic New York City art photo projects to their respective times (see my general post here), how one can almost see the general cultural climate in how those different projects were done (even though their set-up and “scandals” are more or less identical), and then I didn’t, because…
Yeah,...
Random thoughts on making another artist talk...
1. The Flip Mino, while being a nifty little toy, is actually a bit too small and too light. It’s so light that you can’t easily move around with it - things get shaky very, very easily.
2. Corel Video Studio - used for the first time - is a tremendous pain in the neck (as is Apple’s movie software, used the last time).
3. Is there a word for when you upload something to...
Lo-fi loyalty: A look at cassette resurgence
“As it turns out, cassettes faded but never fully burnt out. In fact, they are making a comeback in the world of tangible music.” - story
Lost in the Virtual Pile-On
“Now that we all have a say, and what we have to say is tallied up and presented as if we were voting, rather than expressing an opinion, cultural artifacts like books and music have become products the way bicycles and dishwashers are. The internet didn’t make this true, it just made it more obvious and more true: it’s now about what sells and what doesn’t. What sells must be good, and what...
Despite Crash Injury, Trooper Rescues Woman From...
This is nuts. As it happened, I was in a car just a few hundred yards away from the scene, and we were stuck in traffic for an hour. There were huge clouds of smoke, and the scene of the accident was crazy (two entirely burned out cars and a smashed-up cruiser).
New Christmas Tree Design Will Not Be Mistaken For...
Yeah! Because nothing signifies the birth of Jesus Christ (which oddly enough happens on a major Pagan holiday) as much as the cross he was getting nailed on about thirty years later. Now that’s the way to “save” Christmas: sort of like a very early “Good Friday”. It was about time somebody got that sorted out!
Why One Auschwitz Survivor Avoided Doctors for 65...
“Sixty-five years ago, infamous Auschwitz doctor Josef Mengele removed Yitzhak Ganon’s kidney without anesthesia. The Greek-born Jew swore never to see a doctor again — until a heart attack last month brought his horrific tale into the open.” - story
Googling Merry Alpern
I did remember all - well, at least the relevant (not her name, not the Wall Street detail) - the details of Merry Alpern’s Dirty Windows, but the collection of search terms I used just did not get anything useful back on Google. Try it yourself, try finding art photographs of prostitutes shot through a window in New York…
Summing it all up
“If the people that believed the moon landing was staged on a movie lot had access to unlimited money from large carbon polluters or some other special interest who wanted to confuse people into thinking that the moon landing didn’t take place, I’m sure we’d have a robust debate about it right now.” - Al Gore
120%
The look seniors crave
I received an email with the subject line “Are you giving seniors the look they crave?” I thought my spam filter had missed it, but it turns out it was a photo email, and not a Viagra (V1agra, etc.) ad. Still, I somehow think that “Are you giving seniors the look they crave?” might not be the best subject line for a photo email…
Too Much Chocolate
Too Much Chocolate is one year old today. Congratulations!
From the comments
Just in case you missed this - somebody recommended this in one of the comments here. A redubbing that makes about as much sense as the original, but is way funnier.
"The ear thing"
I don’t really know how tumblr works - whenever I think I got it figure out I notice I don’t. So here’s a quick response to this post by restartist. The “ear thing”, which frightened restartist so much (that his caps key became stuck), was actually stolen from an episode of Night Gallery.
But that’s all fiction, of course, whereas this tongue eater is not (I...